Hyperelastic Materials

Hyperelastic materials behavior can now be simulated using one of the seven available material models, when running a solid mechanics analysis with the Finite Element Method. This significantly broadens the spectrum of applications that can be analyzed with SimScale.

Visualization of the nonlinear strain rate magnitude of an elastomeric bearing under load.

The simulation of Rubber/Elastomer is one of the most common applications for hyperelastic material behavior. The image below shows an application example where the structural response of elastomeric bridge bearings to the load and movement of the bridge was simulated.

Elastomeric bearings of a bridge under movement and load

Advanced Fluid Properties

Support for non-Newtonian fluid behavior has been added to enable the simulation of fluids with the shear rate viscosity changes. This sort of fluid behavior is relevant in many different industrial applications such as for example:

Food Processing (e.g. yogurt or jam)

Biomedical Engineering (e.g. blood or saliva)

Consumer Goods (e.g. soap or cosmetics)

Geo Sciences (e.g. lava or magma)

Process Engineering (e.g. cement slurry or paper pulp)

The five new viscosity models allow to calibrate the fluid behavior for many different industrial applications.

More FEA Boundary Conditions and Constraints

Many users requested additional boundary condition types to be more flexible in the simulation setup of different load scenarios. Therefore, among others, a cyclic symmetry constraint is now available that greatly simplifies the simulation of applications with a rotational symmetry.

Setup of a cyclic symmetry constraint for the simulation of a turbocharger fan

A typical example application can be found in turbomachinery where rotational symmetry is found very often. The images show a stress analysis of a turbocharger fan. The analysis is only carried out on one segment of the fan such that only a fraction of the computing power and time is necessary which is especially helpful when dealing with a larger simulation project. The image below shows how the result can then be assembled to reflect the whole simulation result.

Left: Result on one segment, Right: Assembled result.

Furthermore, a “fixed support” and a “rotating motion” boundary condition have been added to provide even more flexibility and capabilities during the simulation setup. These boundary condition types significantly simplify the start with FEA simulations on SimScale.

New Post-Processing Options

Especially for applications where the interaction across a contact between two parts is important, new result control items are available that allow a more detailed analysis of the contact region.

Simulation result visualization within the contact region of two parts

The image above shows two parts being in contact where the simulation results in the contact region are visualized. The left visualization indicates whether the parts are sliding (2 – red), sticking (1 – green) or are not int contact (0 – blue). The right visualization indicates the contact pressure (blue being high, red being low pressure) within the contact region.

Many Smaller Improvements

Each week we are getting a lot of feature requests, suggestions and insights from our users that help us to work on improving the ease-of-use, robustness and capabilities of the SimScale platform. Therefore, apart from the features highlighted above, numerous smaller improvements have been implemented in the user interface, simulation setup logic, the viewer and the backend. Thanks again for all the valuable feedback! We would love to hear more from you to steer the future development of SimScale. Happy Simulating!

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David Heiny

Co-founder and Managing Director at SimScale. Excited about HPC and CAE technology.